"I tell you he will curse them for it--oh yes, I do believe there is an eternity of suffering, and it is men like those who must endure it. There stood the ministers and the judges in solemn array looking on--the selectmen of the church and town--and enormities like these they call religion--" "No more, say no more!" pleaded Barbara. "I feel it all--I cannot breathe--I seem to have the hangman's cord on my throat--his rough grasp on my arm--do not speak of it again." She was writhing with strange anguish--it seemed to her as if his words had been a premonition of doom! "I must go and walk in the garden," she said, arising; "this has driven me wild." She passed down the steps, and the young man turned to follow; but at that moment, through the oaken door, came an imperious summons, twice repeated-- "Norman Lovel! Norman Lovel!" It was the governor's voice, in a tone of command that he never used unless greatly excited. Norman uttered an apology, which Barbara did not heed, and rushed into the hall. CHAPTER XX. WILD JEALOUSY. When she entered the house so abruptly, Elizabeth Parris went to her chamber, and sitting down upon her bed, remained there in the gloom, brooding over the passion and sorrow to which the scene below had given rise. She wept bitterly with mingled anger and grief, striking her hands down upon the counterpane, and sobbing aloud in unwonted excitement. She believed that Barbara Stafford had lured her young lover from his allegiance, and that she was left to stand quietly by and see this stranger woman usurp and claim the affection which, almost up to that hour, she had deemed wholly her own. There she sat while the moments crept on, seeming to her like hours. At intervals, through the open casements, came the murmur of voices from the porch, mingling at times with the deeper tones of Sir William Phipps, from where he sat in earnest conversation with his wife in the apartment below. At length Elizabeth rose and approached the window, flung back the muslin draperies with an impatient movement, and looked out into the night. Those two forms were dimly perceptible, seated side by side on the carved seat, and a pang of jealousy, more acute than she had yet felt, wrung her girlish heart. She leaned over the sill, striving to catch those low tones, then, startled by the meanness of which she had not believed herself capable, drew back, and began to walk up and down the room, weeping with quick, convulsive sobs, which seemed suffocating her. Still the murmur of those voices was borne up to her tortured ear, rising and falling unequally as if the subject of conversation were of deep interest. This was only an added pain to the poor girl, who kept that gloomy vigil with such unquiet thoughts for her companions.